This and My Heart Besides
by Tiamat's Child
Summary: Marcoh welcomes his best friend home. Spoilers for the Ishval flashback and the end of the manga. Scar/Marcoh.


**Title:** This and My Heart Besides  
**Author:** Tiamat's Child  
**Series:** Manga  
**Word Count:** 868  
**Rating:** K  
**Characters/Pairing:** Scar/Marcoh, OCs  
**Summary:** Marcoh welcomes his best friend home.  
**Warnings:** None.  
**Notes:** Spoilers for the Ishval flashback arc and the end of the manga. The long threatened curtain!fic. Basically. Written for fma_fic_contest at Livejournal, Prompt 117: Romance.

**This and My Heart Besides**

Ishval was blooming.

Marcoh stood on the railway platform nearest his clinic, carrying a furled umbrella over his shoulder and letting the morning rain soak his head, shoulders, and canvas shoes. It was too light at the moment to really wet him all the way to the skin all over, but the winter had been long and dry and cold and the thought of the summer to come had him relishing the present light chill and swift squalls sufficiently that he might not have used the umbrella even if the storm had been stronger. He had brought it for his friend.

The eight thirty train from East City pressed him back a step with the force of its passage as it pulled alongside the platform, long wailing whistle pitched low enough to penetrate and shake without hurting. Marcoh held the umbrella tighter and grinned. He felt airy and giddy: he hadn't decided whether to attribute this to four hours of sleep, or to the return of the man who stepped from the stairs of the train even before it finished rolling gently backward, settling from its brake, as sure and easy as a dream, unconcerned with the possibility of his missing his footing.

Marcoh beamed at him. He could feel the scar tissue pulling about his mouth with the stretch of the smile and it almost hurt, but nothing like enough to stop. He stepped smartly forward, swinging the umbrella off his shoulder to hold it out. "How did it go?" he asked.

It was strange sometimes. Marcoh had known his friend for years and never learned his name. He claimed he no longer had one. He said he'd set it aside and couldn't take it back now, as he was no longer the person it had applied to. He answered instead to most anything people chose to call him. The resettling Ishvallans called him "the Priest", except for a few elders who called him "dear child" or "my son". Some of the Amestrian soldiers still called him "Scar". Dr. Snow and her motley forensic team called him "our friend" with varying degrees of affectionate irony, as did the repatriation team lead by Hutoxi and her friend Ami Kudlick, with less irony and more barely suppressed amusement. Yoki still called him "boss" whenever he was in town. Mahodkht had called him "dear sir" from the first and showed no signs of stopping. Marcoh mostly addressed him directly and tried not to think about it too much.

He reached out and took the umbrella from Marcoh, but did not unfurl it. "Badly. The director insists the scrolls were legitimate purchases."

Marcoh shook his head. "No one is that naive."

His friend gave him a steady look. Marcoh coughed and turned, heading for the steps on the southern end of the platform. "That's exactly what I mean," he said. "He might be deceiving himself but _really_ - " He cut himself off. "I'm glad you're back," he said instead. "I was afraid you'd miss the rain."

His friend said nothing.

"I know you love the rain," Marcoh said, and tilted his face up to catch the drops himself.

They walked back to the clinic together, shoulder to shoulder - or near enough, considering that there was more than a head's difference in their heights. They left their muddy shoes just inside the door, and Marcoh put on water for coffee while his friend took his knapsack to the rear of the building, where he and Marcoh had their room with two salvaged footlockers for clothes. Often it was only Marcoh who slept there, as there was so much to be done and there were so many parishioners, widely flung, to visit, but the footlocker remained, spare clothes and other small presents he could not refuse a testament to his intention to return.

Sometimes it seemed to Marcoh a momentous change since he'd first met the man, when he allowed himself nothing more superfluous than an old jacket. Sometimes the change seemed small, such a tiny outward signifier of what he'd shifted in himself, such a great steadiness beside the sea change Marcoh observed in his own person.

Coffee, and it was not yet past nine in the morning. Marcoh opened the front windows and they sat together on the bench that ran beneath them, sharing one broad stone windowsill as a breakfast table. The garden wasn't showy most of the year, but in the spring rains the well guarded green fluttered open into flower and the air flowing through the opened shutters was rich and thick with their scent as well as the rain. Marcoh pulled his knee up onto the bench and held his mug in both hands, his shin companionably pressed against his friend's thigh.

"I have a patient at half past nine," Marcoh said. "Are you going up to Hutoxi's this morning?"

"Yes."

"Back here for lunch?"

He nodded.

Marcoh nodded too. "Wonderful!" He smiled, and nudged his friend's calf with his free foot. "It's good to have you home," he said, and let himself flow into the joy of the rain, the flowers, the complex heat of the coffee, and the warm force of the man at his side.


End file.
